


Woe Is All I Possess

by Phoenixflames12



Series: An Endless Night: Extended Scenes [9]
Category: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, F/M, Gotham's Writing Workshop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-27 20:12:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13888287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflames12/pseuds/Phoenixflames12
Summary: August, 1941Wracked with camp fever, Captain Jamie Fraser dreams of his wife and offers comfort to a dying boy in his company.





	Woe Is All I Possess

**Author's Note:**

> This can be read in conjunction with chapter 5 of my WW2 AU fic 'An Endless Night.'

 

August 1941

That night, and for many nights afterwards he dreams of her.

 

In the rare, fleeting moments of lucidity granted by the fever’s achingly cold wrath, he knows that it can’t be true.

 

In the moments that he is spared the bloody, hacking cough that has plagued him since the autumn, he hopes fervently that it isn’t.

 

Knows that she cannot, she must not be walking through the hut, her hair caught in strips of tattered moonlight, blazing against the cool, dark night.

 

_‘Are you alive?’_

Her voice could be nothing more than the whistle of the wind whipping through the crumbling wooden walls that are riddled with woodworm, could be nothing more than the tortured wheeze of the man beside him, but he clings to it with all the strength that he can muster.

 

_‘Are you alive?’_

 

That question again; her lovely amber eyes burning with pain and hope and sorrow, framed by an untameable crown of dark curls. One hand reaching to caress his cheek, a sobbing breath catching in both their throats.

 

_Mo nighean don… Mo Chiride… I…_

His plea to her is cut short by a sudden spasm of cramps in his abdomen, his bowels turning over in a fiery ache of urine and faeces surging forth in a torrent of shame that he cannot control.

 

The mess splatters down his legs, staining the tattered remnants of his uniform, his bowels burning against his skin.

 

‘Ifrinn!’ The word cuts across parched lips, strangled and shaking in the quiet.

 

The body next to him shifts irritably; a thin arm that had once held the promise of unstoppable strength thrown out to meet his own. Bony fingers fly out, gripping his wrist past the point of pain, dank, staring eyes glowing starkly from a stricken face.

 

‘Hold your wheest, Mac Dubh! D’ye want tae be thrown out into the cold?’

 

He can’t answer.

 

Can barely find a name for the face, his brain struggling through the fever’s icy fire to find the list of his company that he has repeated over and over again as a form of penance for his actions.

 

The body curls closer, the vice-like grip on his hand showing no sign of lessening.

 

_Private Fergus Donald, one of the bears of their infantry, born and bred in a small fishing village on the banks of Loch Ness._

_That was it._

‘Aye’, the fingers that hold his own are trembling with palsy, their shared skin slick with sweat and grime.

 

From a corner near the door, a thin, sharp cry has started, a young recruit caught up in a nightmare, greeting for his mother.

 

_Maithair._

_Maithair._

 

Slowly the grip on his hand loosens, working its’ way down to support his back as he struggles to sit, barely supressing a wince as the fire crackles forth behind his eyes.

 

‘Ye should go tae him, Sir.’ Private Donald’s voice is gruff and he remembers without knowing how he knew it in the first place, that the bear like figure supporting him had left a young wife and three boys all under the age of sixteen at home when he enlisted.

 

‘Aye’, he whispers, knowing that he’ll have to crawl over the heap of bodies in the dark, that he doesn’t trust his legs to support his weight.

 

Above their heads, a shaft of silver moonlight flickers through the rotten roof, illuminating the heaps of struggling humanity for just a moment.

 

Slowly, he begins to crawl towards the noise; a soft, high keen that makes his heart crack with grief.

 

It is a keen that he remembers echoing from the girls’ bedroom on the night before he was called back from leave.

 

A keen that he remembers soothing in whispered Gaelic, softly taking Faith and Brianna into his arms, promising them that he would be home soon.

 

Remembers writing those words in a smudge of charcoal that trembled between nerveless fingers in his last letter to Claire, hidden in a crack in the wall above his sleeping place.

 

**‘Tell them that I think of them always. That I will be home soon.’**

* * *

The boy has snuffled his way into a hiccoughing silence by the time he reaches the end of the hut.

 

One eye cracks open in a face smeared with dirt, an inch of too-bright hazel glowing in the darkness.

 

The lad’s bones rise sharply through a face that is still clinging to the last vestiges of puppy fat and he cannot be more than sixteen.

 

Dry, cracked lips try to form words, but cannot find the strength.

 

Instead he lays a hand on the boy’s shoulder drawing him up and into a bony, shaking embrace, thinking of Willie. Thinking of that warm, soft body that he had held on the platform at Inverness; the pain of a life that he would not see glowing through his arms.

 

‘I… I wish…’ The words are lost in his shoulder, but he knows their meaning well enough.

 

‘I ken fine, _mo bhalaiach._ Hush now, I’m here.’

 

The boy snuffles closer, thin shoulders heaving under the weight of grief for a mother he would never see again. His breathing is sharp and shallow, gasping out words between the sobs that Jamie cannot make out, knowing with the dreadful certainty born from years in combat, that the lad is not long for the world.

 

Towards dawn, the boys’ breathing hitches into a throaty rattle before ceasing altogether, sightless hazel eyes gazing up at the incremental shafts of pink and grey light that signalled a day he would not see.

 

‘ _Slean leat, mo charaid choir’_ , he murmurs at last, reaching out to close the boys’ eyes, the skin cold and heavy against his fingers.

 

 The sign of the cross that he makes is shaky as he pulls the filthy, mould ridden blanket over the body, wishing there was a window he could open to let the lad’s soul out.

 

_‘Slean leat.’_

 

* * *

 

 

_**Fin**_

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


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